A Distinct Lack of Rain

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Nice to sit on the back veranda and enjoy a little warmth for a while! I even let my indoor seedlings out for a stroll!

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Slowly toughening them up

I bought some apple cucumber seedlings yesterday. I have had success with them in previous seasons – meaning I have been swamped with bucketfuls! Since I plan to sell excess food this season, I figured they would be a good addition to the vegie patch

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The parsley is still a little out of control – but I figured I could transplant a few to make some space – and dig up the rogue potatoes

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I found some fence thingy that had been left here on the property that we have used in the garden before. Today I planted it in the spot where the cucumbers were to be planted. Hopefully they will be happy about climbing up it.

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They got watered in with some kelp juice and covered with some of my plastic bottles to stop any keen slugs from munching on them while they are young and tender

Time to get the beetroot in the ground too

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Tomatoes mulched
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Spare spot under my bean arch – good place to move some of the parsley to
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Hopefully they wont die of shock – but I have enough that it won’t be a tragedy if they do.
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According to Ruby – potatoes at this stage benefit from running a hoe between the rows. So I did.

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I also started to plonk in a few of my marigolds around in the vegie patch. Hopefully will attract bees and ward off bugs

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I also finally got on top of the weed situation at the entrance of the main vegetable patch – its been bugging me for ages, but really not a priority, as other places we needed to weed to plant food. This area is mostly just aesthetic.

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All in all, I feel like I have been reasonably productive and pretty happy with how things are progressing.

Hope everyone’s weekend is great!

Cheers

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Surveying my domain!

Author: Lisa

A happy traveller through life! Right now living in NW Tasmania with a gorgeous Nurse-Husband, a fool of a Siamese Cat and several chickens. We love our fairly simple lifestyle of growing a lot of what we eat and enjoying the stunning surrounds of our little patch.

21 thoughts on “A Distinct Lack of Rain”

  1. What a beautiful garden! I was wondering…. I see you have several beds some permanent like the raised beds… I believe it’s the potato patch… is that boards you put up to mimic a bed to remove (last picture)… if so does this work well for you? Thank you for your response!

    1. Hi Stephanie! Thank-you for your message!!
      The garden has evolved every season since we got here 5 years ago. Originally the previous owners had used those boards to outline 5 garden plots within the whole fenced area. (I’ll have to hunt up pictures sometime so I can do a post from the start and each changing year) We decided all the pathways between those beds took up valuable growing space so we started to remove them and made bigger plots. When we extended the area into the lawn, I was fighting a lot of weeds, so I used those boards to make the first two raised beds. The other boards are just leftovers from how the garden was set up before… eventually I will remove them all – and just do plots of different vegetables wherever I fancy. Its kinda fun making up the garden pattern each year! There is a bit of a slope to the whole patch so the remaining boards have just been holding some of the dirt back – I’ll smooth it out at some point no doubt!
      Thanks so much for reading! πŸ™‚

  2. While you are planting, I am starting to clean things up. I have 2 tomato plants that have lots of tomatoes still. An apple tree for more applesauce. I also have red and golden raspberries that are about done. People can’t believe I have had raspberries thru Oct. So it is nice to see all your fresh plantings. I can still watch things grow. I wondered if you ever put grass clippings and leaves over the area you don’t want weeds in over winter? I do this and it really saves me from weeding in the spring.

    1. G’day Ramona! Nice to hear what you have been up to. I can’t believe you have raspberries at the end of the season either!! Thats paradise right there!!! πŸ™‚ Golden raspberries? I am intrigued!
      How long can you stretch the tomatoes out? We enjoy our apples too. It seems while everything else slows down, the apples still give us an abundance of food. One of our apple trees is covered in blossoms now. Its lovely!
      Re the grass clippings. No – I haven’t done that. I am very much going to do this to our gardens at the end of the season. Probably won’t have enough grass clippings, but the seaweed will work just as well. The Duck-Yard weeding project is SO slow!!! πŸ™‚

      1. Golden raspberries are sweeter than red. They don’t hold up as long as reds do after being picked. I think that is why you don’t see them in grocery stores.

        1. I’ll have to keep my eye out for them. I haven’t seen them available here before (But then again maybe I just haven’t noticed!) If I saw them it’d be great to give them a try.

  3. Hello Lisa! Great idea for the marigolds in the veggie patch, I did that too this summer and I loved the colour. I also threw in some nasturtium starts in with the squash and pumpkins and the result was spectacular. I never lacked for bees and there was so much colour! The squash and pumpkin leaves grew overtop like a canopy. It made quite a jungle but it was cool. And yay for your chickens and their eggs!! (I just caught up on the past few day’s posts) My birds are about 23 weeks old and I am still waiting for my first egg!

    1. Good Morning (here anyway) Amy!I am liking the idea of nasturtiums in the pumpkins – Since I am putting those and the zucchini down in the new patch, it would be great to have those scattered about too! Ruby has them – I may be able to get some seeds.
      We had eggs last night as part of dinner – they were so good!
      Oh your first egg is always the most exciting!! Hopefully they will be producing soon!
      Looks like we have another nice day here as well, so we will be able to get more done outside! Thanks for the nasturtium idea!!

      1. You’re welcome. And don’t forget you can eat the leaves and flowers. I had a lot of fun feeding them to guests when I gave them a tour of my garden. They’re a bit spicy for me though ? Good luck finding the golden raspberries, I remember seeing them for sale in the greenhouses and passed them by but now I might add them to my list for next year, they look delicious! A friend gave me her 5 black raspberry plants this spring (they don’t sucker!!) and they were a lot of fun for the children to raid but the berries crumble in your hand so you cannot store them. Another friend also has raspberries with no thorns so I definitely want some of those, the fruit was huge and I am a big fan of no thorns, LOL.

        1. I’ll have to snack on the ones Ruby has to test them out! My husband will like that idea – he has been researching edibles – things we don’t really class as food! It is fun giving guests random things to eat when they are in your garden!! lol
          Blackberries are quite a problem in Australia. But I have to admit I love finding a rogue blackberry patch to raid! Last year because of the lack of rain, our usual areas had no berries. Should be different this year! The abandoned school a block from Ruby’s is where we usually get a few buckets – love fresh blackberry jam! (and free is good) Oh but the thorns!!! Their defense system is diabolical!!! My raspberries aren’t too bad in that respect.

  4. Blackberries don’t really grow around here so I’m more than a little jealous. I really like finding food that others take for granted or don’t know about too, ha ha! You can find wild strawberries, saskatoon berries, mint and some other super tiny cherries in the forest around here. We ate stinging nettle this summer and it worked out really well. Do you ever eat any of the seaweed you find or does it all go into the garden?

    1. Foraging (and knowing how) is awesome. When we lived in Canberra, a friend showed us an abandoned lot right in the middle of the surrounding suburbs that was full of neglected apple trees! At the right time, we would go and fill sacks of them! πŸ™‚ I have heard good things about stinging nettles, but I am not that hungry!! lol! (Scaredy cat!)
      There is a type of seaweed that I sometimes munch on when I am on the beach, but its …. ? Salty?? lol!! Its fun to nibble on but not make a meal of.

  5. Apple trees are my favourite too, it is easier to get more from less work, ha ha! And applesauce in the winter brings back great memories of the fall, eh? That is so neat how your friend found the abandoned lot, maybe one day I will be so lucky. A couple of years ago I found a large berry patch in the forest and was so excited.

    I met a woman who taught me nettle was edible and it grows so plentiful in the forest around our house, I would get mad about being stung all the time so I figured I’d get even by consuming it, ha ha! After you pick it and the leaves wilt it does not sting anymore and can replace spinach. The children made such a deal of eating “Stinging Nettle Soup” (veg soup with nettle) that we ate it a lot. Normally they aren’t fond of veg soup, LOL. Plus, like feeding friends nasturtiums, it makes for a good story hahaha!

    1. We were really lucky to move here and have two well established apple trees.
      Maybe one day I will be lucky enough to try the stinging nettles… after making sure our variety is the right kind!!!

  6. Hahaha! Of course! You are indeed very lucky to have established apple trees. Our property doesn’t have any. I have planted a plum tree and 4 cherry trees that should hopefully produce. We had lots of blossoms this spring but then a cold snap came and we didn’t get any fruit ? I’d like to add a new fruit tree a year.

    1. They take so long!! We have the huge established cherry plums too – buckets of fruit generally!
      We have planted a few other things that are not producing and pretty slow – a couple of different plums, two cherry trees (but 4 would be better!) and two persimmons. There is also a peach and a nectarine but they get curly-leaf and I am not sure we will be able to really manage that. There is also a young pear that was here when we got here… its done nothing exciting in 5 years! Maybe this year is its year?? πŸ˜€
      I like the idea of more cherry trees, but we do have a cherry farm down the road that we can buy from – love cherry season!

  7. Wow, you really have an orchard! We watched “The Hunter” again last night because I wanted to see what Tasmania was like (and for Willem Dafoe too, of course). Your climate seems to be a lot like British Columbia. I live in Alberta and although there has been really good work developing some fruit trees that survive winter and our shorter growing season, you have to have a much greener thumb than mine, ha ha! And lots of patience. I have had a few friends tell me even though I bought older trees I will still have to wait around 5 years still for them to establish and begin to produce fruit. Then I let the turkeys out for some free time and they ate all of the leaves on one of the cherry trees, LOL. That one may take longer! I just caught up on the past couple days’ posts and Ruby’s lemon tree is amazing!!!! I have a miniature one in a pot in the house and I am looking forward to my one lemon in 9 months, ha ha! And your garden is coming along great ?

    1. The Hunter was a good movie – if somewhat depressing. There is a new movie out that was shot at Stanley, which is just down the road from us. Haven’t seen it yet (Can’t remember name at the moment, but will let you know)
      Oopsie, re turkeys! lol
      The trees take patience, but mostly I forget about them and enjoy the faster growing seasonal stuff in the meantime.
      Oh – Movie – “Light Between the Oceans” Will watch and let you know what its like πŸ™‚

    1. Its a pain – you have to spray at the right time – & when its not raining!! Seriously?? Thats impossible in Tassie!! πŸ™‚

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